Merry Chrismukkah, indeed.

From Politics:

"The underlying purpose of the new crowd seems altogether different. Being inclusive is not what they have in mind. On the contrary. It looks to me like what they want to do is to slice off those of their fellow citizens who don't meet their standards for admission to the "Judeo-Christian Tradition" -- e.g., those who have an "aversion to religion," by which they presumably mean an aversion to organized religion and/or religious dogma -- and then to read these citizens out of American society. As a Judeo-Christian who has an aversion to religion, and who is an American as good as or better than any mousse-haired, Bible-touting, apartheid-promoting evangelist on any UHF television station you can name, I must protest.

Where is it written that if you don't like religion you are somehow disqualified from being a legitimate American? What was Mark Twain, a Russian? When did it become un-American to have opinions about the origin and meaning of the universe that come from sources other than the body of dogma of organizations approved by the federal government as certifiably Judeo-Christian? If it is American to believe that God ordered Tribe X to abjure pork, or that he caused Leader Y to be born to a virgin, why is it suddenly un-American to doubt that the prime mover of this unimaginably vast universe of quintillions of solar systems would be likely to be obsessed with questions involving the dietary and biosexual behavior of a few thousand bipeds inhabiting a small part of a speck of dust orbiting a third-rate star in an obscure spiral arm of one of millions of more or less identical galaxies? What is so terrible about being averse to religion?!? (Diarist suddenly pitches violently backward in chair and disappears from view, a la John Belushi.)"

Also, from the chapter introduction, quoting Robert Ingersoll:

"We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans, and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass your hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stare miracles. We want this year's fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years."

Amen.

So in love with Rick.

Posted: Sunday - December 25, 2005 at 01:23 PM |